A New Low For The Dispatch

It's common knowledge.  The Columbus Dispatch has always been a blatantly conservative newspaper.  The recent change of ownership has not changed that.  If anything, their editorial pages are growing even more right wing.

Today, the Douchepatch may have hit a new low.  Editorial page editor Glenn Sheller wrote a big five-column opinion piece about the supposed "falsehoods" in the assault weapons "debate."  My immediate first thought was, "What debate?"  The NRA and all their little Republican droogies have made sure that there is no real possibility of honest debate.

Sheller's talking points are that the AR-15 assault rifle is not really a military weapon, is not as powerful as other rifles, and is not designed to kill people.  These are the dangerous falsehoods that have his panties all in a bunch.

He says that "civilian" AR's (AR stands for assault rifle) are not fully automatic like military issue, they're just semi-automatic.  So they're not military/war weapons.  Technically true, but so fucking what?  Does it really matter whether it fires 800 rounds a minute or 30, 40, or however fast you can squeeze the trigger?  Still a lot of goddam lead in the air.

Sheller goes to great lengths to describe the standard caliber, gunpowder volume, muzzle velocity, and foot-pounds of energy delivered by a round fired from an AR-15.  He includes a silly photo of a Chapstick beside a bullet, and wants us to know that other guns are more "powerful."  Again, so fucking what?  It's not a BB gun, and it's plenty powerful enough to kill.  

Killing is what guns are for.  That includes the AR-15.  Sheller is pissed because a recent NY Times front-page editorial stated this undeniable truth.  He trots out the feeble old excuse that "guns have multiple uses, including hunting, target shooting, recreational plinking, home defense and competition."  (Did he really say recreational plinking?  He did.)  Yeah, you can stir a pot of pasta with an AR-15, and cook bacon on its muzzle, but it is still designed to kill.  That's it's purpose.

We have an obvious gun problem in this country, and it's getting worse.  People like Sheller make it worse.  It's disappointing and shameful for the Dispatch to allow their editor a platform to propagate such misleading gun-nut nonsense.  Glenn Sheller is nothing more than an apologist for the NRA death machine, a dissembling, flap-mouthed, twaddle-wit, a frightened little man who must have the smallest penis in the western hemisphere.  He should be fired immediately.